'I cannot imagine Garbo allowed to act Anna Christie in the silent days, and that she is now is surely cause for gratitude.' Photograph: John Springer Collection/Corbis

When Greta Garbo comes to the door in the second reel of Anna Christie, the figure of the barman hides her. Then she walks round him. Clever publicity photographs have made us familiar with the clothes she wears, with the hat which throws her face into new planes, and with the new expression in that face. She walks across to a table. Marie Dressler sits on, watching. Then Greta Garbo orders a whisky; she speaks. It may be a double whisky. In the excitement of not missing a word of this first utterance it is hard to catch. Her voice is low. But there is no doubt that she talks well. She knows how to talk.

I was never very much impressed by the Garbo of the American films. It was amusing to see anyone so badly dressed, but it palled. It was amusing to see a dynamic person occasionally break through the furs and Medici collars, but it was a perversion. Her creative power was submerged, and only personality came through. But in Anna Christie she does not worry about a "glamorous personality," and creates something instead.

I cannot imagine Garbo having been allowed to act Anna Christie in the silent days, and that she is now is surely cause for gratitude. She has been allowed to escape. Anna Christie is not a very good play, and it has not been made a very good film. We have seen so many of these fallen daughters whose fathers fail to understand, when they learn the truth, that their own neglect was responsible. The very next morning I saw Pola Negri as another of these dockside women in The Woman He Scorned. Though Czinner made it, all Pola Negri did was to go the same old rounds of lighting cigarettes and putting on a gramophone while she did her hair. It was stock kinema. But Greta Garbo does something more with her part. She lifts Anna Christie out of her rut, and shows us not only the woman's emotions but the causes for them. Garbo expresses what at best is refusal to be trapped by what we have ourselves made and at worst is claustrophobia. Only when out at sea she is happy.

It is true that her appeal now is more to the intellect than to the senses. She does not use her voice in this film to woo or to lure. It is low, deep, and casual. The most remarkable thing about it is the way it seems to come straight from her brain, so that when one thinks of other stars talking, they seem only to be repeating lines. But Greta Garbo's face even takes on more vividness from her voice. Most film stars forget to act facially when they talk. But, though their gestures have to suffer for the expressiveness of their eyes, neither Greta Garbo nor Marie Dressler have ever mimed better than they do in this film. RH

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